Archive for the 'Metabolism' Category

Today’s installment of Better Know A Scientist is Dr. Pete Jordan. He was kind enough to answer some questions via e-mail recently. Here’s the transcript.

Atoms to Zebras (AZ): Thank you for taking the time to allow us to better know you and your work. Tell us about yourself.
Dr. Pete Jordan: I’m originally from Australia, where I pursued a degree in mechanical engineering at Queensland University of Technology. After graduating from QUT, I wanted to spend an extended period of time overseas, and fortunately I managed to find sufficient funding to study for a master’s degree in biomedical engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. However, I left UBC after a year, and started working on a PhD at Cornell University in New York. My PhD research was in the field of cardiac arrhythmias and computational modeling. I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation in December 2006, and am now working as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD.

AZ: Explain to the readers your general area of research?
Dr. Jordan: I am currently working in the area of human metabolism and body composition. We are interested in determining the important factors regulating the long-term composition of the human body, in particular focusing on the sequence of events that lead to obesity. We are looking at these problems using mathematical models of human body composition regulation, as these provide us with insights that cannot easily be obtained experimentally.

AZ: What is your area of focus?
Dr. Jordan: I am currently developing a mathematical model of the way body composition changes during infancy, using data for infants aged 15 days to 2 years to calibrate the model.

AZ: What led you to your current position?
Dr. Jordan: I didn’t ever wake up one morning and think that I was going to be a human body composition researcher. As with so many things in life, it was a lucky confluence of events that lead me to be here. For both professional and personal reasons, coming to the NIDDK made the most sense as the next move in my career – my mentor here at the NIDDK knows my doctoral advisor very well, and thus I know that I am in good hands here; in addition, my fiancee lives here, and we wanted to live in the same city.

AZ: What do you enjoy most about your work?
Dr. Jordan: The eureka moments – those times when you “see” something that you didn’t see before, or when everything that you’ve been working on finally falls into place. The joy of discovery is a great motivator.

AZ: What is the most challenging aspect?
Dr. Jordan: The solitude. Being a researcher can be lonely, and I find that I don’t always have the motivation to keep going. Being part of a team can certainly help offset these concerns – it all depends on the nature of the work that one is doing at any point in time.

AZ: Any advice for students interested in your field and science in general?
Dr. Jordan: No matter what area of science you’re interested in, study as much mathematics as you can. Biology is becoming increasingly quantitative, and having a mathematical structure on which to hang all one’s biological knowledge is extremely helpful for organizing what can appear to be a very disorganized body of knowledge. Similar mathematical “themes” appear in a wide variety of natural phenomena, making mathematical tools a means by which one can study probably a wider array of phenomena than one can study with any other set of scientific tools.

Many thanks go out to Dr. Jordan. Stay tuned to learn more about his work and more chances to Better Know A Scientist (index).

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew